Milton

The population of Milton is divided into a number of hereditary classes. The position of each class is set in stone, with almost no social mobility between them. The majority of Miltonites are Human with a smattering of demihuman people, Tieflings, Aasimar, Genasi and Half-Elf among them. Being touched by heavenly, underworld, elemental of shadowrealm forces is not taken in a negative way in the Guardian City. In fact, at least among the Miltonite class, the obvious arcane and physical advantages bestowed by such lineage, are seen as a sign of divine providence.

At the top of the society are the Miltonites, considered the initial inhabitants of the Broadland Valley and original builders of the city. Miltonites, both male and female complete the Cadre, a brutal 20 year training program, started at age 7, where they live in community and train constantly, both on land an sea. At the conclusion of this training pair bonds are expected to become formalized in marriage. Miltonites couples are then provided a land lot in the valley and expected to produce at least two to three children, ensuring the posterity of the class. Miltonites are prohibited from engaging in mercantile trades. Each Miltonite receives a stipend from the city, an amount that would be considered wealthy level income in any other city. The total number of Miltonites is around 9000 adult individuals.

Below the Miltonites are the Citydwellers, free non-citizens of the city. These individuals work as crafters, traders, manufacturers and sailors. They are free but basically have no political rights other than property rights. By law they are suppose to be protected by the government and are not to be enslaved except as punishment for criminal behavior.

At the bottom of the social hierarchy are the Serfs. Technically slaves owned by the city, a serfs can be neither freed or sold. They outnumber the Miltonites by at least 15 to 1 and are divided into three categories.

The Landserfs are tied to the land. They are primarily farmers, foresters, miners and laborers.

Cityserfs are employed as domestics, They also provide laborers for Milton factories and are provided to the Citydwellers as a resource for which they pay the city. Landserfs are expected to feed themselves. The Cityserf are expected to be fed by their Citydweller overlords. This includes their families. A fat Landserf is rare but not unknown. Most Cityserf children are gaunt, seldon seeing meat in a meal.

Brasites are serfs drafted into the Robot Battalions of Milton. Most are normal humans, armed and placed under a ley energy shard enhanced geas spell. In recent decades some have been induced to undergo the soulforging ritual.

Gearforged soldiers require care, particularly one who were compelled upon pain of death to "willingly" undergo the transformation. Strong geas, threats against loved ones, and inducement of hopelessness are only so effective against a creature that is likely to outlive all its Miltonite masters, but the city looks to the benefits of having such robust cannon fodder and appears to be ignoring the risks of empowering their most likely rebels.

Like its arch foe, the City state of Toresta, Milton counts the "Straznicy Gwoazd" (Guardians of the Stars). Astraios and Noctis as its patrons. Its two hereditary kings, from the Daiga and Dipond families, are believed to have been engendered by The Twins, the result of an incestuous coupling by Astraios in his male form and Noctis in her female form. The kings serve religious, judicial and military roles.

The Assembly of Elders is made up of people elected for life by the Miltonites. The assembly is made up of 25 elected elders and the two kings. They propose laws, act as a jury for serious cases against the city committed by Miltonites and distinguished foreigners, typically generals, admirals and the members of conquered nations. Often considered mere show trials by outsiders the Miltonites maintain that such affairs are scrupulously conducted.

The Council of Milton is a potential assembly of citizens, which in reality never actually meet. Instead decisions are made through a plebiscite during which all vote by open ballot. The Council elects all 25 members of the Assembly of Elders, each of the five magistrates of the city. Vote on war and peace. (The cold to hot war with Toresta is undeclared) Voted on major laws and reforms proposed by the Assembly of Elders. Decided succession disputes in the royal houses. Kingship(Queenship) is limited to the royal families, but not necessarily hereditary, particularly if an heir is thought generally unsuitable or too young (still under the Cadre.) Has the power to strip citizenship or depose a king.

The five magistrates are annually elected during the Five Day Festival. They are responsible for conducting foreign policy, command the Krypteia, the Milton secret police, oversee the Cadre.

Milton is located at the mouth of the Fairstream River. Access to the city is protected by the Home Fleet, a naval force made up of war galleys and airships. Powerful arcane defense also protect the city.

Milton forswears walls and battlements trusting to its Miltonite arcanists, Citydweller artificers, and robot battalion serfs to protect its land and citizens.

The Krypteia, Milton's Secret Police, keep order among the Citydwellers and serfs. They have no authority over Miltonite citizens, who are expected to see to their own affairs. Youths, barely out of Cadre, often act as agents or investigators for citizens in matters related to other citizens and duels between proxies or primaries are not unknown. Such agents have no official authority, but as long as they do not interfere with Krypteia affairs the city government will not usually interfere with them, leaving that to each citizen, and the forces they can command.

By imposing on the food production capacity of the Landserfs and taxing the trade and industrial production capacity of the Citydwellers Milton's ruling oligarchy manages to pay themselves a handsome profit. Miltonites command galleys, galleons and airships, many of which carry out privateer actions against other nation's trade.

Milton also is a lynchpin the the slave trade. By law slaves cannot be transshipped through the city. Milton serfs are owned by the city and cannot be bought or sold, neither are they allowed outside the Broadland Valley, except in Milton hulls or when deployed with the robot battalions. That does not prevent the use of Milton hulls to tranship slave traffic from South Icarema to Aerusia.

As might be expected this is a major point of contention between Milton and Toresta.

Since the Dark Layline passes through the city and north through the Broadland Valley, Milton is optimally located to support an advanced arcane industrial infrastructure. The mage-artificers of the Citydweller class have founded advanced production facilities rivalling those in Toresta or Bayco. Staffed by Cityserfs, many who were forcibly removed from the land as excess Landserfs.

Milton shipyards produce advanced galleys, inferior only to those produced in Toresta. Milton also contains one of the Pasaulis' few airship factories. Their more mundane galleon shipyards produce vast numbers of trader ships staffed by serf sailors under Citydweller mates and Miltonite officers.

Unlike their serf underlings the Citydwellers are free to travel outside Milton. Many travel abroad to be educated in the arcane arts and sciences. Sorcerous lines abound among the Miltonite citizens, some claiming they come from the Twins themselves, even if not in the royal houses.

Milton's economy is dependent on its forests, mines, and the abundance of Leyline Magic from the Dark Leyline which follows the Fairstream River. Near the northern border of Milton lands, the Archer Leyline crosses the Dark producing a portal in the heavily fortified Carthan Bastion.

Much of the valley not given over to agriculture is used to harvest magical essence. These farms do not yield as high a crop as the stronger Danilov Leyline of Toresta and the Mother's Leyline in Bayco.

The city gathers its drinking water from the Fairstreeam River. Like most modern cities Milton uses composting toilets, whose night soil is used for agricultural and industrial use.

Public transportation, at least for citizens, is ubiquitous throughout the city, though members of the Cadre are expected to run everywhere they are not marching in formation. Milton's street and road system is well built and they are known as extensive road builders, particularly in areas outside the Valley where they build trading posts and stations.

The forests, magical essence farms, factories and mines support an array of shipyards and airship factories.

Milton is constructed in circles defined by circular and spoke roads that divide one district from another. The core of the city, its Acropolis District, where the dual palaces of the kings are, as well as the Citadel, where the Dark Leyline crosses the city.

A large part of the outer ring of the city, it's largest district, is occupied almost entirely by serfs. It can be lawless in places, though not even the most ill behaved serf would dream of accosting a Miltonite passing through. Both because the more highly trained citizen is likely to easily best them, and because whether they succeed or not retribution would be taken on the entire district. This has happened several times in Milton's history, with the serfs being brutally put down in mass by the city.

Miltons primary assets are its prime location at the Estuary of the Fairstream River and the Oscare Ocean. This makes it a hub or trade coming downriver and across the sea. While slaves are not traded in the city many other products are.

The city's location on the Dark Leyline makes it a natural location for farming ley essence, which can then be utilized at it's modern arcane factories.

Miltonites consider their large serf population, farmers, cityserfs and members of the robot battalions, both Human and Gearforged as city assets, though the serf themselves are likely to take a different view.

Citydwellers, who make up most of Milton's non-serf workforce are not permitted to collectivize in guilds, unions or other organizations, which might compete or disrupt the Miltonites complete control of city. That is not to say that certain prominent Citydwellers do not hold some influence among their own class. Citydwellers are often given positions of petty power as overlords in agriculture, supervisors at factories or petty officers aboard ship, where they direct both other citydwellers and serf.

Miltonites often line up behind one royal family or the other, when particularly contentious rulers have disagreements on policy, but such alignments tend to follow particular issues rather than creating permanent parties or factions.

The Ludzie people originated on the south coast of the Eye of the World, the vast inland sea of Aerusia, some time in the ancient past. They are were one of several human groups to appear on Aerusia some time after the Old Days, when Magic had already returned to the world.

Milton's original inhabitants moved south of the Pietu Mountains in 247 ATC. After a period of wandering they arrived at the mouth of the Fairstream River in 262 ATC where they constructed a mill, and a small town formed around it.

By 355 ATC a sizable central town had formed, with three nearby smaller towns. By 387 ATC all four towns had spread, creating a continuous urban area and a single city, Milton.

By that period seafarers from Milton had already ventured far and wide beyond Trilla to the Icarema continents. The strong Dark Leyline was being investigated by Milton arcanists and its prime trading location at the river's mouth was fueling immigration from Aerusia's interior.

Orc hordes from Aerusia's interior, coming in successive waves required that the city stand up a strong land army, which they conscripted from outside the Broadland Valley. These became the eventual serf class. Often these consisted of river people from outside Milton territory which were conquered preemptively to prevent their being overrun by the hordes.

As arcane industry became more advanced Milton invited a number of immigrants to come to the city, opening up economic opportunities for them, without surrendering political authority to them.

This was most clearly articulated in the Lyndican Reforms, adopted in 467 ATC which set up the Cadre training system for citizens, codified the rights and duties of the Citydwellers, the city's free non-citizens, and the status of the Serfs, as city owned property. Oddly it also outlawed the private owning of slaves within the city and in Milton territory, but did not prohibit the dealing of slaves by Miltonites outside Milton Territory.

Engaging in the slave trade quickly led to conflict with the free city-state of Toresta, which had been established by related Ludzie humans, along with gnomes from Aerusia's Eastern Reaches over four and a half centuries before.

Milton is a half a millennium old town, but very little of the city built prior to Lyndican Reforms, in the mid fifth century, still exists. Modern Milton buildings tend to a brutalist design, using concrete, raw geometric shapes and massive forms. Using concrete, raw wood and brick its structures tend to be blocky, creating a sense of weight and strength.

The purpose is to make serfs feel small and impotent against the might and pervasive power of the Milton state. In conquered territories government buildings and occupation structures follow the same form for the same purpose.

The Broadland Valley is surrounded by the Vidurio Mountains, which eventually become the Przybrzezny Islands off the coast of Milton. The valley is broad and flat at the river's mouth. The valley floor itself is fertile and most of the land is given over to farming. The Dark Leyline parallels the river and on the leyline itself ley essence farms are located.

The Fairstream River runs from the Pietu Mountains in the north through the Puike Plains. Through this area the river has many rapids, falls and obstacles and is not considered navigable. Milton considers its northern borders delineated by Carthan Bastion, located where the Dark Leyline crosses the Archer Leyline. South of this the river is navigable, though for about half the distance only by flat bottomed river paddlewheels,

Milton itself in situated at the mouth of the river on the Oscare Ocean. A wide natural harbor, its opening protected by the Przybrezny Islands, almost ensured that Milton would develop into a seafaring nation.

Located in a temperate zone, Milton tends to have hot summers and cold and snowy winters. Rain is common in spring. Growing seasons are long and farmers often plant far into the fall, for winter wheat and spring crops.

The Broadland Valley is rich in fertile soil. The forests of the Vidurio Mountains provide wood for the construction of Milton galleys and trade galleons. Mines in those same mountains provide iron, copper, tin and shard crystals. Milton fishing fleets fish the Przybrzezny Islands, and the sea beyond.